Joshua Lane

Biography

Josh Lane teaches the Furniture portion of the Connoisseurship courses for the Winterthur Program. Lane specializes in early American furniture and its cultural contexts. Research interests include collaboration with conservation and curatorial colleagues to study furniture woods and other materials that circulated in the global economy.

Lane joined the curatorial staff at Winterthur Museum in 2014 as Curator of Furniture. Previously, he served as both Curator of Furniture and Curator of Academic Programs at Historic Deerfield, Inc. At Deerfield, he curated two permanent furniture exhibitions (see select exhibitions) as part of the “Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture” collaboration. While at Winterthur, he has curated Cultivating Style in a Multi-Ethnic World: New York Furniture, 1650-1850, and, in conjunction with staff in Winterthur’s Conservation department, Brittle Beauty: Understanding and Conserving Chinese Export Lacquer. He has taught undergraduate courses in American Studies and material culture at Yale University, Miami University of Ohio and both undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Education

• B.A., Amherst College (American Studies)
• M.A., M.Phil., Yale University

Selected Publications

• “The Full Splendor of Beauty and Grace: Understanding Design and Proportion in New England Furniture,” lead article, Historic Deerfield Magazine (2010)
• With E. K. Gronning and R. F. Trent, “Dutch Joinery in Seventeenth-Century Windsor, Connecticut and the Origins of the ‘Hadley’ Style in the Connecticut River Valley,” Maine Antiques Digest (2007)
• With D. P. White III: “Framing Furniture and Fashioning Community: Woodworkers and the Rise of a Connecticut River Valley Town, 1635-1715” in American Furniture (2005)
• “The Rise and Fall of the Yankee Forest,” lead article, Historic Deerfield Magazine (2004)
• With D. P. White III, The Woodworkers of Windsor: A Connecticut Community of Craftsmen and Their World (exhibition catalog) (2003)
• “Race as a Category in Colonial America,” in Encyclopedia of American Cultural History (2001)

Select Exhibitions

• Brittle Beauty: Understanding and Conserving Chinese Export Lacquer, Winterthur Museum (2105)
• Cultivating Style in a Multi-Ethnic World: New York Furniture, 1650-1850, Winterthur Museum (2014)
• Educating the Mind’s Eye: The Art of Young Adults, 1790-1840. Flynt Center for New England Life, Historic Deerfield, Inc. (2013)
• Furniture Masterworks: Tradition and Innovation in Western Massachusetts. Wright House, Historic Deerfield, Inc. (2013)
• Into the Woods: Crafting Early American Furniture. Flynt Center for New England Life, Historic Deerfield, Inc. (2006)
• Northampton Furniture in the Collection of Historic Deerfield: Two Centuries of Design, Smith College Museum of Art (2004)